Set deep in the Valley of the Sun, the lush and sprawling ‘megapolis’ has a problem – the rivers
By Joanna Walters | The Guardian
Jennifer Afshar and her husband, John, pushed their bikes across the grass and paused to savour the sunshine, while their two boys went to look at the duck pond. Other kids were playing soccer or doing tricks in the skate park, and families picnicked on blankets or fired up a barbecue across from the swimming pool.
‘An urban bullseye for global warming’ … Phoenix, Arizona. /Photograph: Dreamframer/Getty Images/iStockphoto
“We moved here from Los Angeles, to get away from the rising cost of living and the traffic,” said Jennifer. “When we saw this park, we thought they were punking us it was so good. There’s low crime, the home owners association takes great care of the grass and trees – we like it.”
The Afshars live in the squeaky-clean suburb of Anthem, Arizona. It’s part of a giant conurbation of satellite towns surrounding Phoenix, and is a classic example of why this metropolitan – or “megapolitan” – area is tempting fate.
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Twenty years ago, Anthem sprung out of virgin desert, a community “masterplanned” from scratch with schools, shops, restaurants and spacious homes – many behind high walls and electronic gates – and its own country club and golf course. It now has a population of 30,000.
To look around Anthem would be to imagine there is no such thing as a water shortage. But the lush vegetation and ponds do not occur naturally. Phoenix gets less than eight inches of rainfall each year; most of the water supply for central and southern Arizona is pumped from Lake Mead, fed by the Colorado river over 300 miles away. Anthem’s private developer paid a local Native American tribe to lease some of its historic water rights, and pipes its water from the nearby Lake Pleasant reservoir – also filled by the Colorado.
